It's incredible to think that it's been 7 years since the tragedies of 9/11

I was sitting at my desk and seen the first new stories coming in, saying a light aircraft had hit one of the towers....my how that developed.....what was you doing on that day??

RIP all those souls that were lost

 

 

I was sitting in my caravan awning, on holiday in Hunstanton, reading the paper and listening to Steve Wright in the afternoon, when they cut into the programme to announce that reports were coming in of an aircraft hitting one of the towers. Did'nt really stir until about 15/20 minutes later, just after 2pm, they broke in again to say that another aircraft had crashed into one of the towers. On hearing this, I thought I'd check out the teletext for more detailed information. But of course, when I switched on the tele there was already live coverage from the US networks and at first I really thought I was perhaps watching a trailer for a new Die Hard movie. It was just too devastating to comprehend. After that I did'nt move from my tele until late evening. To this day I still cannot understand why there was no effort whatsoever to rescue anyone from the roof top areas. I had visited the towers just 9 months previously and went up onto the roof area, so I could really feel for all those trapped people. RIP all those poor lost souls. John.

 I had just come out of a lecture and I went over to the pub for my lunch. My friend is an American who owned the place and he was going crazy. He had plonked a TV on the bar so that customers could watch. You would have heard a pin drop if it was muted. There were loads of people just open mouthed, especially when you saw the second aircraft go into the buildings.

Those scenes from the news bulletins were so real and yet nobody could quite believe it had just happened. My friend was then trying to get through to family who live near there but as can be expected it was a total logjam, I think there were American tourists in the pub as well, who like everyone else were simply stunned into silence.

I was also in the centre of London on July the 7th, this too was a very sobering experience.

 

My sentiments to the families who lost loved ones and my utmost respect for all who risked everything to save others

It happened during my year out from university. I was working for an instrumentation firm that made gas analysis equipment and walked into a room to be told the first plane had hit and then obviously things got worse through the afternoon. I distinctly remember a small group of us crowding into the quality control managers office in order to see the pictures and read the news stories on his desktop PC. For a while a colleague and I discussed how many people could have been killed and for a brief period actually tried to do the maths on it - two buildings times one-hundred floors each times approximately fifty people on each floor... - until we realised how ghoulish it was and stopped. The company I was working for had a lot of US clients and the MD decided it was inappropriate for us to carry on working so we were sent home in the middle of the afternoon and of course, by this time it had become obvious that it was no accident and that somebody, somewhere was responsible.

A few days later I was recalibrating a gas analyser (It literally sucks the air in and tells you its composition) which had a barometric feature, meaning it could be used under varying air pressures and when I signed the paperwork I noticed the return address was  for a US Navy SEAL SDV team in Hawaii, and then the thought started running through my head that sooner or later the US were obviously going to retaliate and the piece of equipment I had just worked on may be involved in some small way. Obviously though, I was completely wrong - not much need for submarines in Afghanistan.

I was flynf and whenI landed a ground engineer told me that a light aircraft had crashed into one of the twin towers. back in the briefing room the TV was on and, well, you know the rest.........